Yellow Leaves- bleeding hearts

Lamprocapnos spectabilis- bleeding hearts

The beautiful bold leaves of the my bleeding heart plants were the inspiration for my ink sketch this morning. The flowers are already starting to die back, so I made sure I was up early to begin sketching and drawing them before the last of the flowers were gone. The foliage is still green but will also begin to die back and turn yellow after the plant has finished flowering. I'm fortunate to have four bleeding heart plants in my small garden, I only planted one but the others popped up after I had moved soil around when landscaping. The divided leaves have a very distinct fern-like shape, and made for an interesting study.

For this drawing I used black and yellow drawing ink on paper. I drew the main lines with a dip pen and used a paintbrush for tone and colour washes.

'Bleeding Heart Leaves' 2017

I'm working on some drawings of the bleeding heart flowers, and hope to post these soon!